U2 set to start recording new album: Lanois
Irish rock group U2 are getting ready to start production work on their new album, according to long time producer Daniel Lanois.
In an exclusive interview with the Rock Report, Lanois admitted that he and the Irish rockers, along with producer Brian Eno, will start this Monday to lay down tracks for the band’s new album, a follow-up to 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
“I’m getting on a plane (Saturday) to go and meet the boys in U2 in Dublin,” said Lanois from Los Angeles. “We’ve done some jams so far, but Monday’s our official starting day.”
During the course of the phone interview, Lanois described the recording process he anticipates for the as-yet untitled new album, tentatively scheduled for an October release.
“Out of (the jam sessions) has come great riffs and great beginnings of songs to be then added to with Bono’s lyrics. We’re just going to take the favourites of those and see about building songs around them. Sometimes they act as demos and we then say, ‘OK, let’s abandon that’ and sit on the couch with the acoustic guitars and make sure the song is in order and then we go back to the sonics. The technique varies from song to song. Sometimes things are more written than others. Some of the things are more groove-based, riff-based, and that has served us well in the past.
“We did three jam visits, one of them in Morocco, and a lot of great things came out of that. It doesn’t take long for us to come up with something in a room. Everyone loves to play, and it’s nice to be an honourary member of U2.”
When asked about how long he’d be working with the band on the new album, he only committed to describing the kind of schedule they looked forward to recording with.
“We’re doing three week stints. Three weeks on, then a little time off, then back in again.”
Born in Hull, Quebec in 1951, Lanois first became involved in music working with his brother Bob in their mother’s basement in Ancaster, Ontario. Among the first artists that Lanois worked with as a producer were Nash the Slash (formerly of FM) and children’s performer Raffi.
In time, Lanois began to collaborate with producer Brian Eno on some of his solo projects before Eno invited him to co-produce U2’s 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire. Over the course of the next 24 years, Lanois has continued to work with U2 in addition to a variety of other classic rock musicians, including Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel and Robbie Robertson, all while continuing his own career as a singer-songwriter.
Last year at the Toronto Film Festival, Lanois premiered the documentary Here Is What Is, where cameras followed him as he worked on his album of the same name. The album itself is available for download exclusively through Red Floor Records.com, the web site to his new record label.
“I think if this new digital age…is giving an artist an opportunity that they wouldn’t have had back in the day because back in the day not everybody got a record deal,” commented the producer. “Here, if somebody has wares that they want to show and sell then they can do it and let the consumers be the judge and let them be their own A & R department. There were a lot of filters people had to go through back in the day and now those are gone.”
Originally published on the Q107 Rock Report Blog
February 16, 2008
